Aussie Rules

Let me tell you about the most ridiculous, but fun and exciting, sport i've seen in a long time. it's called australian rules football. for us non-australians, it would be referred to as aussie rules. to australians and/or people living here, it's called footy. plain and simple. it's as big as north american football and way, way cooler. in fact, i actually enjoy watching this sport. i wasa lucky enough to go to a game to see the West Coast Eagles. they happen to be last year's champs, so tickets are hard to come by. luckily, a friend of a friend has season's passes and was unable to attend.

the game is played on a pitch that is 1.5 times larger then your typical soccer pitch. but it's in the shape of an oval. there are four posts at each end, 2 tall ones in the middle and 2 short ones on either side of those. the object of the game is to kick the ball between the tall posts (for 6 points) or knock it through by hand (1 point), kick it through the short post (1 point) or hit the posts (1 point).

no more then 18 players per side can be on the pitch at one time. the only way to move with the ball is to kick it to your team mates (where the ref whistles to stop the play, but the whistle is mostly ignored and play continues on. it's wierd), kock it to another player (you can't actually pass it, you have to hit it to them) or run with it (but you have to bounce the ball every 15 meters at the most). the ball that they use looks like a rugby ball, but it probably a slight cross between the rugby ball and the american football.

the game has 4 quarters of about 20 mins each with no stop time. but the clock is technically "stopped" when the play stops, so the quarters can run up to about 30 mins or so. i think these guys may be the fittest athletes i have seen. they run the entire game but still have to be pretty strong because footy is very much a contact sport. tackle tackle tackle, in just about any way shape or form to get the ball. between quaters, the guys stay on the field and discuss with the team. at half time, unfortunately, they go away for about 25 mins. nothing happens at half time except a bunch of little kids playing on the pitch. that's not very exciting.

superficially, aussie rules seems to equal no rules, but really, there are many. almost like lacross... you know, you can't pull the other player's shirt, but feel free to cross check him in the back with your stick. well, it's kind of like that in footy as well. lucky for my friend and i, the man beside us was helping out a bit, then lent us his son's headset so we could hear the commentary and actually try to understand what was going on.

as far as i could see, there were 5 refs involved. 3 on the field and 2 on the side. there were also 2 "goal" refs who have these hand signals and flags to say that a goal has been scored. the refs on the field are in pretty fantastic shape as well. the only other people on the field are uhm, i'll call them runners. they are people dressed in fluorescent yellow (and i would want to be as well!) who run onto the field with info for players from the coaches. only one per team is allowed on at a time.

it's a fun sport to watch and we're definitely becoming big fans. if you want to read more about it you can probably look on wikipedia. needless to say, it was good times to see the game.

xo